In a normal world I’d make you correct SpookyFrank but unfortunately I disagree (re: govt survival).
I’m replying because i had the same conversation with my brother and sister-in-law
last night (their view was that once this was over there would have to be a reckoning - I disagreed). Maybe the bubbles and echo chambers we live in have been amplified in this age of lockdown. The kind of chat we have here on Urban and within our social media groups - sharing well researched articles written by experts and backed up by data - isn’t a reflection of society as a whole.
I’m sure I’m insulting your intelligence here and you are well aware of the above. This is a country after all that gave an overwhelming majority to Johnson’s Tory’s only months ago. People really don’t seem to see the irony in clapping for the NHS having voted Conservative. Look at the front pages of the shit rags this morning - all deliriously happy for Boris and imploring their readers to give him the love. like it or not, the media sometimes determines the narrative yet at other times, acts as a weathervane.
On dial ins at work and chatting with friends on WhatsApp and family members on the phone this week I’ve asked people what they think of certain govt policies and decisions and by and large the consensus has been ‘trying to do a near impossible job in v trying circumstances’ and ‘isn’t that Rishi Sunak an excellent public speaker’. This from a range of voters and with attitudes that range from engaged to apathetic.
Long time lurker on these COVID threads (which really have been excellent and an example of much that is great about U75) first time caller and I share your sense of blame toward the Government. I just don’t think anything will change. In fact, if you offered me a free bet, I’d bet that in the long term Boris and his pals will come out of this smelling of roses
Well yes and I'm aware that the bubble/echo chamber effect did make me wildly overestimate Corbyn's prospects at the last GE. But I don't think this is the same at all.
There is a point at which the scale of the problem becomes impossible to hide. I don't think that will be during the current peak, which I'm still expecting to level off a bit in the near future, but months down the line when nations with proper testing, contact tracing and community healthcare are returning to something like normality and the UK is still seeing large numbers of deaths
and huge levels of disruption. The plan to get this over with at whatever cost and come out the other side first to get a jump on our competitors will have had the exact opposite effect.
More importantly, the tories are losing their media allies. Johnson's brush with death will have bought him a week's grace at best, but in that week the issues the people were attacking him over have all continued to get worse. Maitliss' monologue has gained a lot of traction, but I don't think that in itself is the watershed moment some people are thinking it is. When they have to say on the six o clock news that we now have the highest death toll in Europe, that'll be a watershed moment. The point where even those shameless bootlickers at the BBC can't continue to back the tories, that won't be one idenfitifable moment but I believe it will come sooner or later.
I should point out here that I'm not spooling out some fantasy version of events. This is not how change should happen. The 'post war consensus' wasn't really a consensus, it was a compromise. And it was vulnerable because of that. Whatever politics emerges from this whole shitshow it will still have the stain of neoliberalism on it, because that ideology has been ground in too deep for too long. Landlordism will survive. Financial speculation will survive, and will continue to be a driving force. The work that's needed to ensure this is already being done, they've got on it much quicker than they have the work needed to defeat the actual outbreak. The income protection stuff is all there to make sure there doesn't need to be a rent freeze, or worse rent strikes. It is protection for banks and speculators, not workers. I do expect Sunak to emerge from this with some credit to his name, and to be an ongoing danger as a result. I'm not going to call 'Sunak/Starmer national government' just yet but it doesn't seem like a totally absurd propostion.
And of course in Starmer we have the ideal Labour leader to help create a new neoliberal-lite fake consensus. He might as well have been built in a factory for that exact purpose.